The Fifohazana: Madagascar’s Indigenous Christian Movement By Cy ...

Rainisoalambo and his followers wore white robes in a style called didy mananjara. This style of clothing includes a long robe, falling to the calf, gathered at the chest and the back, and open in front from the neck to the chest. Ralaimavo confirmed that the didy mananjara is an indigenous item of clothing, which Christian Malagasy, prior to Rainisoalambo’s arising, had come to eschew in respect for the teaching of the missionaries.²⁶ When Rainisoalambo was converted, he returned to Malagasy indigenous clothes and called upon others in the revival to do the same. Ratongavao states that the indigenous Christians of the revival claimed a church liberated from foreign clothes.²⁷ Rainisoalambo urged his followers to wear the didy mananjara as a mark of equality between each other, to cover the difference of life station between them. Thus, these clothes represented the Malagasy as what they were and also came to represent indigenous Christianity. Dada Rajosoa added that the didy mananjara was a sign of humility.²⁸

Additionally, all Malagasy, men and women, wore lamba, that is, long strips of fabric, over their clothes. This was an indigenous fashion. Rainisoalambo and his followers wore lamba to cover their clothes, with straw hats for the men and hairstyles arranged to the back for the women. Arthur Stratton stated that the wearing of the lamba became a sign of Malagasy independence after the French conceded governmental power in 1960.²⁹ For Rainisoalambo and the revivalists, the wearing of the lamba signaled religious independence long before that.

The people of Rainisoalambo’s tribe, the Betsileo people, were accustomed to working in cooperation with each other as subsistence farmers. They did all of their work communally; they helped each other and, in this way, accomplished more.³⁰ For example, one day all of the people, and especially the men, would give one family a hand in tilling the soil. The following day, the same group would do the same work for another family and so on for each community family. The aim of cooperative labor was doing all of the work with help and without spending much money on worker salaries. Moreover, it improved the unity and love for one another in the community, which was a high value for the Malagasy people.

Rainisoalambo grew up with this custom of cooperative work. When he had his first vision, he took this custom for use in the revival. He led the revivalists to practice cooperative labor, to live out the fifth of the guiding commandments of the movement.